Two years after its first report on the subject, ScanAlert found that "cautious shoppers are becoming more cautious than ever: 26% took more than three days to complete their purchases, 18% more than one week, and 6% more than two weeks. Compared with 2005, ScanAlert said, these figures represented increases of 23%, 28% and 50%, respectively.

In 2005, the average time between a consumer's first visit to a Web site and the time of purchase was just over 19 hours, the study showed. Now it's 34 hours, 19 minutes--an increase of about half a day.

"Someone who clicked on your $0.50 keyword ad and didn't immediately convert is not necessarily a foregone half-dollar investment," wrote Nigel Ravenhill, director of marketing communications, ScanAlert. "There is a good possibility that she will return and buy. Make sure that your analytics data can reflect the origin of multiple subsequent return visits. Study your AdWords conversion tracking code data, for example, and take a holistic, long-term view of your campaign spending to arrive at more accurate ROI numbers."

Ravenhill also suggested that online retailers:

Move sales focus from shopping cart abandonment to site abandonment--understand that abandoning the cart is simply the act of moving on to the next comparison opportunity.

Create and Elevate Comfort Level for Prospects and customers.

ScanAlert analyzed 2.6 million online sales generated by more than 128 million visitors to 470 Web sites over the past two years--for an average site conversion into sales of 2.07%.

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